1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an abnormal pattern detecting apparatus wherein an abnormal pattern in a radiation image of an object is detected from an image signal made up of a series of image signal components representing the radiation image.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Techniques for reading out a recorded radiation image in order to obtain an image signal, carrying out appropriate image processing on the image signal, and then reproducing a visible image by use of the processed image signal have heretofore been known in various fields. For example, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 61(1986)-5193, an X-ray image is recorded on an X-ray film having a small gamma value chosen according to the type of image processing to be carried out, the X-ray image is read out from the X-ray film and converted into an electric signal (image signal), and the image signal is processed and then used for reproducing the X-ray image as a visible image on a copy photograph or the like. In this manner, a visible image having good image quality with high contrast, high sharpness, high graininess, or the like can be reproduced.
Also, when certain kinds of phosphors are exposed to radiation such as X-rays, .alpha.-rays, .beta.-rays, .gamma.-rays, cathode rays or ultraviolet rays, they store part of the energy of the radiation. Then, when the phosphor which has been exposed to the radiation is exposed to stimulating rays such as visible light, light is emitted by the phosphor in proportion to the amount of energy stored thereon during its exposure to the radiation. A phosphor exhibiting such properties is referred to as a stimulable phosphor. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,258,264, 4,276,473, 4,315,318, 4,387,428, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 56(1981)-11395, it has been proposed to use stimulable phosphors in radiation image recording and reproducing systems. Specifically, a sheet provided with a layer of the stimulable phosphor (hereinafter referred to as a stimulable phosphor sheet) is first exposed to radiation which has passed through an object such as the human body in order to store a radiation image of the object thereon, and is then scanned with stimulating rays, such as a laser beam, which cause it to emit light in proportion to the amount of energy stored during exposure to the radiation. The light emitted by the stimulable phosphor sheet, upon stimulation thereof, is photoelectrically detected and converted into an electric image signal. The image signal is then used to reproduce the radiation image of the object as a visible image on a recording material such as photographic film, on a display device such as a cathode ray tube (CRT), or the like.
Radiation image recording and reproducing systems which use stimulable phosphor sheets are advantageous over conventional radiography using silver halide photographic materials, in that images can be recorded even when the energy intensity of the radiation to which the stimulable phosphor sheet is exposed varies over a wide range. More specifically, since the amount of light which the stimulable phosphor sheet emits when being stimulated varies over a wide range and is proportional to the amount of energy stored thereon during its exposure to the radiation, it is possible to obtain an image having a desirable density regardless of the energy intensity of the radiation to which the stimulable phosphor sheet was exposed. In order to obtain the desired image density, an appropriate read-out gain is set when the emitted light is being detected and converted into an electric signal to be used in the reproduction of a visible image on a recording material, such as photographic film, or on a display device, such as a CRT.
Recently, in the radiation image recording and reproducing systems which use X-ray film or stimulable phosphor sheets, particularly in such radiation image recording and reproducing systems designed to facilitate medical diagnosis, not only have image signals been processed in ways which ensure that the visible images produced from them will be of high quality, but image signals have also been processed in ways which allow certain image patterns to be extracted from radiation images. One type of processing which results in extraction of an image pattern is disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,850.
Specifically, an image pattern can be detected in a complicated radiation image by processing the image signal representing it in various ways. The image signal is made up of a series of image signal components, and with appropriate processing the image signal components corresponding to a particular image pattern can be found. For example, from a very complicated radiation image, such as an X-ray image of the chest of a human body, which includes various linear and circular patterns, a pattern corresponding to a tumor, or the like, can be detected.
After a pattern, for example, a tumor pattern, is detected in a complicated radiation image, such as an X-ray image of the chest of a human body, a visible image is reproduced and displayed such that the detected pattern can be viewed clearly. Such a visible image can serve as an effective tool in, particularly, the efficient and accurate diagnosis of an illness.
By way of example, an X-ray image of the chest of a human body, which has been recorded during an ordinary image recording operation, includes both the patterns of soft tissues, such as the heart, the diaphragm, and the lung fields, and the patterns of bones, e.g. the ribs. In cases where operations for automatically finding an abnormal pattern, e.g. a tumor pattern, are carried out on such an ordinary X-ray image of the chest, it may occur that an image pattern, which is not a tumor pattern, is found as a tumor pattern by mistake due to adverse effects of bone patterns. In order that such an error may be avoided, an attempt has been made to obtain an image of only the soft tissues from energy subtraction processing and to find a tumor pattern from the image. Such a technique is described, for example, in "Detection of Chest X-ray Image Pattern Using Energy Subtraction Image" by Katsumi Mizutani, Jun Hasegawa, Junichiro Toriwaki, and Hiroshi Nishiya, Denki Kankei Gakkai, Tokai Branch Joint Meeting, 1987, page 564.
In energy subtraction processing, such characteristics are utilized that a specific structure of an object exhibits different levels of radiation absorptivity with respect to radiation with different energy levels. Specifically, an object is exposed to several kinds of radiation with different energy levels, and a plurality of radiation images are thereby obtained in which different images of a specific structure are embedded. Thereafter, the image signals representing the plurality of the radiation images are weighted appropriately and subjected to a subtraction process in order to extract the image of the specific structure. The applicant proposed novel energy subtraction processing methods using stimulable phosphor sheets in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,855,598 and 4,896,037.
In cases where operations for automatically finding an abnormal pattern, e.g. a tumor pattern, are carried out on a radiation image primarily composed of patterns of soft tissues of an object (hereinafter referred to as the "soft tissue image"), instead of a radiation image composed of both the patterns of soft tissues and the patterns of bones of the object (hereinafter referred to as the "original image"), errors in finding an abnormal pattern, which are caused to occur by adverse effects of the bone patterns, can be reduced. However, the soft tissue image is obtained by processing a plurality of radiation images, and therefore the image quality of the soft tissue image is worse than the original image. Therefore, the problems occur in that errors in finding an abnormal pattern increase due to bad image quality of the soft tissue image.